Pretend you’re an airplane: How to stay motivated for running

I was so tempted to skip the race. It was a Thursday afternoon, and by the time I finished my five Zoom meetings, it was getting dark and the sky was belching sleet. Still, I headed for the door, because my last call of the day had been with a couple of professional runners, each with multiple national championship titles in distance running under their belts.

Doctor Megan Roche and her husband, David, encouraged me to think of my workout as a break from a long day at work, rather than another item on my to-do list.

“I struggle with motivation all the time”, David Roche saying. What goes beyond it is finding joy in the activity itself. Sometimes it helps to get a little silly, he said. “It sounds ridiculous, but if you’re running downhill or just tired, spread your arms like you’re an airplane and suddenly everything becomes less serious.”

It sounded silly, but when I tried the airplane arms trick, my cool, dark run turned surprisingly lighthearted. Here are some other ways you can find inspiration and maybe even a little joy in your daily workout.

Don’t think of it as an exercise.

When exercise isn’t appealing, making it feel like something else can help. Crystal Steltenpohl, a psychologist at Southern University Indiana, evansville, who studies exercise motivation, recalls a conversation she had with a participant in one of her studies who said, “I’m going to play basketball, but that’s just hanging out with friends.” In other words, even though the activity she qualified as exercise, it was just an added benefit, rather than the motivating factor.

I spent years as a competitive runner, cyclist, and skier. And while I continue to do these activities, I usually do the recommended 22 minutes a day of moderate-intensity exercise automatically, without even thinking about exercising. Instead, I take my morning walk to clear my head, feel present in my surroundings, and connect with my husband and dogs.

“If you ask, most people will say they want to exercise for their health, and that’s a big goal,” he says. Katie Heinrichan exercise scientist at Kansas State University. “But what really gets people moving is doing something they enjoy.”

There is no perfect activity for everyone. “How do you like to move?” says Henry. “Maybe it’s dancing, or it could be a walk in the park. For some people, it could be CrossFit or Peloton.”

Casey Johnston stumbled upon weightlifting through a Reddit thread of a woman starting a strength training program. That post inspired Johnston, a health and science writer who now publishes the newsletter Ella She Ella’s a Beast, to try a similar program. He discovered that she loved him much more than running. While running gave him too much time to ponder anxious thoughts, “you can’t think about anything else when you have 200 pounds on your back,” he says.

Combine your incentives

Last month, researchers published a mega-study testing the effectiveness of 54 approaches in motivating people to exercise more. The experiment, which recruited more than 60,000 members of the 24 Hour Fitness chain as test subjects, found that offering a free audiobook was one of the most effective ways to get people into the gym. The idea was to give the participants something to look forward to while they exercised, says one of the study’s organizers, katy milkmanteacher of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and author of the book How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.

It’s a familiar approach for Megan Roche. She likes to take pictures and running around gives her the opportunity to find interesting things to photograph, especially while she travels. “These photos take me through my career journey,” she says.

Make exercise a priority

“The number one reason people give for not exercising is time,” says Heinrich, and the only reliable way to find time is to prioritize it. “You have to make the decision to fit exercise into your day; It’s not going to happen magically.”

Johnston used to try to work exercise into his life by doing things like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, “but that never convinced me or gave me any validation that I was doing anything meaningful,” he says. “Giving exercise a different place in my life was motivating.”

If you think the exercise is optional, you give yourself permission to skip it. Instead, try to think of it as an essential part of your job, he says. brad stulberg, author of The Practice of Groundedness, and frequent writer on human performance. “Whether you’re a parent, businessman, doctor, writer, artist, lawyer, or educator, exercise will make you better at what you do,” he says. “It will help you focus, stay calm and collected, and improve your energy.”

Be flexible

Making exercise a priority doesn’t mean you need a rigid schedule. A study that Milkman and some colleagues published in 2020 found that giving yourself flexibility to reach your goals could increase your chances of success. The researchers studied more than 2,500 Google employees, randomly assigning some of them to be paid to go to the company gym for a period of time that they had identified in advance as the most manageable, while others could choose to go at any time.

The researchers hoped that committing to specific times would help people form stronger habits, says the lead author. John Beshearsa behavioral economist Harvard Business School. Instead, people who had been given flexibility ended up going more often after the payments ended. When the group on the rigid schedule missed their planned workout, they didn’t go at all, while the group that had practiced finding the time continued to do so, says Milkman.

get some support

“The best physical motivator is a friend. They hold you accountable for showing up and support you when you don’t,” says Stulberg.

In a 2017 study, Heinrich interviewed CrossFit gym owners and trainers and found that feelings of community were a strong motivator for people who stayed with classes. “It’s not that you have to go, it’s that you want to go and you’re attracted to the group,” she says.

Having a cheerleader on the sidelines can also give you a boost, says Steltenpohl, by affirming that you’re trying hard and acknowledging the obstacles you’ve faced. “If you’re exercising alone, having someone to check in with can be helpful.”

Create an environment for success

Look for ways to make your environment more attractive for physical activity, says Steltenpohl. Find or create a place where exercise feels appealing. That could be a gym, a park, a walking trail, or even just your room with an exercise mat and a fitness app, she says. The key is that your environment is preparing you to succeed.

Roche usually goes for a run first thing in the morning and prepares ahead of time: laying out her clothes, making the coffee pot, and queuing up a playlist of energetic music as she gets ready to run. On winter mornings, she also turns on bright lights and occasionally warms up her muscles first in a hot shower.

Anticipate how exercise will make you feel

It’s tempting to think you’re too stressed or tired to exercise, but exercise is often exactly what you need to feel better. “You don’t need to feel good to get going, you need to get going to feel good,” says Stulberg.

Exercise can help control your mood, Steltenpohl says, and when you’re feeling down, exercise is sometimes a powerful antidote. “When I’m really frustrated, I think it’s a good time to take a walk.”

Johnston is motivated by how her workouts feel. “I really enjoy how it feels physically to use my muscles and do a particular task,” she says. She is also encouraged by the progress she is making through weightlifting. “It’s impossible to make people understand the feeling of getting stronger, especially when they’re new to it.” It’s a benefit that happens fairly quickly, says Johnson, and can create a positive feedback loop.

If you slip, try to get back on track right away.

The most effective trick identified in the 24 Hour Fitness mega-study was encouraging people to get back on track when they missed a session. In this scenario, people made a commitment to go to the gym on certain days and times, and if they missed one of these planned visits, they would receive a reminder and also the opportunity to earn extra points if they made their next planned visit. (Participants earned points that they could convert into Amazon cash.)

It didn’t take much (about 9 cents in bonus points) to get people back in the gym, and Milkman theorizes that it’s the “don’t miss your workout twice” cue that pushes people, rather than the trivial bonus . You could imagine making this more powerful by joining the gym with friends, she says.

– This article originally appeared on The New York Times